Federal investigators have interviewed Rep. Ilhan Omar’s sister after searching the Minnesota Democrat’s Washington home, as sources say DNA and records could support a grand jury case for immigration fraud.
Federal investigators voluntarily quizzed Sahra Noor last week after the Oct. 12 search of the northeast Washington bungalow Rep. Ilhan Omar shares with her husband, Tim Mynett, in an ongoing immigration fraud probe, the New York Post reported.
Fox News Digital first reported the conversation. Noor, author of “Salt in the Snow: A Somali Immigrant Story,” had been scheduled to appear Thursday of last week at the University of Minnesota’s Rochester branch. A local bookstore representative said she canceled because of a “family emergency.” She did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
"family emergency."
The Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office is running the immigration investigation. Separate from that case, D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro is overseeing a probe into Omar and Mynett’s finances, including House disclosure forms that showed Omar deflating her net worth by tens of millions of dollars in the last year over an unexplained accounting “discrepancy.”
Sources familiar with the matter say evidence taken from the home, along with whistleblowers and government records, has given investigators a solid basis to go before a grand jury and seek an indictment on charges of conspiracy to commit immigration fraud. No indictment has been reported as returned.
The Post reported Wednesday that federal investigators obtained DNA samples in an effort to prove Omar, and possibly other family members, defrauded immigration authorities.
One source said the DNA is critical to the allegation that Omar married her brother, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, in 2009 to help him get a green card. That green card never came through. Omar has repeatedly denied the sibling-marriage accusations since she first sought public office in Minnesota’s legislature in 2016.
Elmi divorced Omar in 2017. In 2019, he applied for a marriage-based green card and then withdrew the application after U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services asked for additional information about his relationship with Omar, the Washington Post reported last week as cited in the Post’s account.
Omar’s family emigrated from war-torn Somalia via Kenya in 1995. She has lived in the United States since. Prior source indications also pointed to a separate immigration issue: that either Omar or her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, allegedly misrepresented her birth date so she could become a U.S. citizen when her father naturalized in 2000.
The reported timeline of Omar’s marriages and filings is dense. She had an Islamic wedding ceremony with Ahmed Hirsi in 2002. She filed joint taxes with Hirsi in 2014 and 2015 while still legally married to Elmi. Documents the Post previously reviewed showed Omar and Elmi appearing to share a residence at one point.
Her first legal marriage to Hirsi was not entered until after the divorce from Elmi was finalized. She has married three times and divorced twice. She gave birth to three children, the last while still legally married to Elmi. In 2019 she divorced Hirsi and married Mynett, a political consultant who had done work for her campaign, following an alleged affair.
Legal experts noted in the reporting that the statute of limitations is lengthier for providing false information on immigration paperwork than for fraudulently marrying someone. A marriage-fraud conviction would not jeopardize Omar’s own citizenship the same way a false-statements case could.
Omar’s attorneys, Amy Jeffress and Joshua Matz, sent a letter to the Justice Department last week. They said they had “grave concerns” with the investigation and demanded the “immediate return” of all seized property. They claimed federal agents did not comply with a magistrate judge’s “special requests” for executing the search warrant and flouted longstanding Justice Department policy by conducting the search with just over three weeks to go before the midterm elections.
A Justice Department spokesperson rejected the letter outright.
"riddled with false allegations and inaccuracies."
The same spokesperson added:
"Our attorneys and law enforcement partners complied with all court orders and legal obligations, as they always do,"
And went further on the decision to leak the letter:
"Leaking a letter to the press right after sending it is not good faith. It is a publicity play."
Trump administration border czar Tom Homan said Saturday that federal investigators have built “a strong case” that could lead to Omar’s denaturalization if immigration fraud is proven.
"a strong case"
The immigration track sits with Minnesota prosecutors. The finances track sits with Pirro’s office in Washington. Together they put a high-profile member of the progressive “Squad” under federal scrutiny on both status and money, the same themes voters already associate with border enforcement and public integrity.
Omar’s camp frames the home search as improper in timing and execution. The Justice Department calls that framing false and theatrical. Sources on the investigative side describe DNA, seized materials, whistleblowers, and government records as building toward a grand jury presentation. Homan’s public assessment is blunt: the case is strong enough that denaturalization is on the table if fraud is established.
What remains unsettled is whether prosecutors convene that grand jury, what any DNA comparison actually shows, and how the separate disclosure-forms probe resolves the tens-of-millions “discrepancy.” The sister’s voluntary interview, the canceled book event, and the attorneys’ letter all landed after the Oct. 12 search, not before it.
Elected officials who write immigration law do not get a pass when federal investigators say the paperwork, the marriages, and the family story do not line up. Accountability is not optional because the target holds a safe seat or a progressive brand.
